Top 500 Seanan McGuire Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “If you didn’t think I knew what I know, why are you telling me what you think I didn’t know but might have come here looking to find out?” Shelby paused. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure even I understand what I just said.”

— Seanan McGuire

152. “We can be sad and we can be hurt and we can even be killed, but the world keeps turning, and the things we’re supposed to do keep needing to be done.”

— Seanan McGuire

153. “We’re all puzzle boxes, skeleton and skin, soul and shadow.”

— Seanan McGuire

154. “I hate paperwork,” announced Andy, looking up from his desk. “How is it that we have a form for ‘you got a gingerbread house dropped on your head’? How do we have a job where that’s something you’d need a form for?” “There’s.”

— Seanan McGuire

155. “Home always shrinks in times of absence, always bleeds away some of its majesty, because what is home, after all, apart from the place one returns to when the adventure is over? Home is an end to glory, a stopping point when the tale is done.”

— Seanan McGuire

156. “Only by learning about the journeys of others can we truly understand our own.”

— Seanan McGuire

157. “Sometimes that’s all you can do. Just keep getting through until you don’t have to do it anymore, however much time that takes, however difficult it is.”

— Seanan McGuire

158. “This has never been about good and evil. This is about power. Who has it, who doesn’t. Who knows how to use it.”

— Seanan McGuire

159. “No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.”

— Seanan McGuire

160. “You forgot that sometimes, fair value comes from change, and death, and sacrifice. You can’t have everything and give fair value. You can’t stop your clock and expect to stay a part of the world.”

— Seanan McGuire

161. “She considers pit traps and high explosives the appropriate solution to almost every problem.”

— Seanan McGuire

162. “The petty-minded fools here think surgery and butchery are the same thing.”

— Seanan McGuire

163. “Where did you find the whipped cream?” he asked. “You had milk, I had science,” said Jack. “It’s amazing how much of culinary achievement can be summarized by that sentence. Cheese making, for example. The perfect intersection of milk, science, and foolish disregard for the laws of nature.”

— Seanan McGuire

164. “Hopefully, anyone who saw a woman riding a screaming mermaid in a wheelchair down Leavenworth at a quarter to five in the morning would just think they’d had too much to drink.”

— Seanan McGuire

165. “Katherine ignored her. Not maliciously: Katherine frequently didn’t hear her name the first time it was called, preferring to keep her nose in her book and continue whatever adventure she had decided was more interesting than the actual world around her.”

— Seanan McGuire

166. “I’m going to kill you.” “You look fine.” “I’m quite serious. I’m going to murder you. I’m going to murder you to death. And then, after I’ve finished doing that, I’m going to kill you again, just to be sure you got the point.” “Shelby, honestly, you look fine.”

— Seanan McGuire

167. “This is how it should end. They won’t remember the way I died, but they’ll remember how I lived, forever. I was the monster under your bed, wasn’t I? I’ll be the monster waiting for your children.”

— Seanan McGuire

168. “In the days when the faith in the Feathered Lords was waning, came Elizabeth Evans, called Beth, the kindly Priestess, who did find Us gathered in her yard and say Why Look At You, You Must be Starving. And she did gather Us in her apron and carry Us into her Home, which would be our Home thereafter, and say, You Are Safe Here, If You Will Follow the Rules I Set –.”

— Seanan McGuire

169. “Hope is a vicious beast. It sinks in its claws and it doesn’t let go.”

— Seanan McGuire

170. “One, a shy girl with brown braids and thick glasses, had confessed that her world was at a nexus between two minor compass directions, being High Rhyme and High Linearity. Nancy hadn’t known what to say to that, and so she hadn’t said anything at all. Increasingly, that felt like the safest option she had.”

— Seanan McGuire

171. “You must be a lot of fun at parties,” said Christopher. Jack smirked. “It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I’m the life, death, and resurrection of the place.”

— Seanan McGuire

172. “Never bring a weapon too big to double as a dining utensil to the table when dining with friends.”

— Seanan McGuire

173. “I didn’t even feel my face hitting the pond. Everything was darkness, glorious darkness and the final, perfect absence of pain. It was done, all of it, the running and the fighting, and the pain. After everything that I’d gone through, it was finally over, and this time, the water would carry me home.”

— Seanan McGuire

174. “Just because I wouldn’t go back if you paid me, that doesn’t mean I want to forget a second of what happened to me. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t gone to Prism.”

— Seanan McGuire

175. “Not all the sparks that fly when the mortal lands and Faerie meet are bright ones.”

— Seanan McGuire

176. “This, you see, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them. A person may look at someone else’s child and see only the surface, the shiny shoes or the perfect curls. They do not see the tears and the tantrums, the late nights, the sleepless hours, the worry. They.”

— Seanan McGuire

177. “I like existing. I’m not ready to unexist just because of stupid causality. I didn’t invite stupid causality to my birthday party, so it doesn’t get to give me any presents.”

— Seanan McGuire

178. “You know what, honey? You’re right. It’s time to change my approach. Can you give me one of those nice concussion grenades?”

— Seanan McGuire

179. “Every world gets to make its own rules. Sometimes those rules are going to be impossible. That doesn’t make them any less enforceable.”

— Seanan McGuire

180. “Quentin quieted and watched her for a moment, hungrily, like he was trying to memorize every detail. Maybe he was. Forever is a long time. You have to burn the edges of memory onto your heart, or they can fade, and sometimes the second loss is worse than the first one.”

— Seanan McGuire

181. “Every time I think my family has plumbed the depths of stupidity, somebody goes and finds a goddamn shovel.” – Jane Harrington-Price.”

— Seanan McGuire

182. “The Archivist, who had seen a thousand friendships become unbalanced by assumptions about who owed who, even when no one walked cloaked in feathers, was silent for a moment.”

— Seanan McGuire

183. “Do you remember what I said last night?” “That I needed to feed myself before I tried to buy Moon’s debt,” said Lundy. Her jaw set stubbornly. “That doesn’t seem fair.” “Doesn’t it? Hunger makes us foolish, causes us to make poor decisions without realizing how poor they are. If you want to help her, you need to help yourself first. No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.”

— Seanan McGuire

184. “Clothes matter,” he said, draping the vest over his arm and reaching for a pile of neatly folded blouses. “Clothes are part of how you learn to feel like yourself, and not someone who just happens to look like you. Don’t you remember what it was like when someone else decided what you were going to wear?”

— Seanan McGuire

185. “It was nice to have the boys noticing her for a little while, when she was trying to work out social interaction; boobs were like a cheat code for getting along.”

— Seanan McGuire

186. “We hated each other so well and loved each other so badly...”

— Seanan McGuire

187. “It must have been very difficult, being Sloane.”

— Seanan McGuire

188. “Some questions are okay. You can’t have people without questions. People are too curious for that, they’d get all gummed up and stop working right if you didn’t let them have questions once in a while. But there’s a big difference between asking for things and only asking. ‘Do you think there will be grapes sometime this week’ isn’t the same as ‘can I have some of those grapes.’ Do you understand?”

— Seanan McGuire

189. “I will never love again, for my heart has gone to ice and ashes. Nothing more can matter in the face of all that has been lost. It is a terrible thing, to be a mother with no children. It is a terrible thing, to be alone.”

— Seanan McGuire

190. “She’d approached the issue of social interaction like it was another puzzle to be solved, another prize to be won.”

— Seanan McGuire

191. “If someone says ‘sorry’ and you don’t say ‘it’s okay, I’m not mad anymore,’ you’re a bad person. Especially if you’re a girl.”

— Seanan McGuire

192. “I had no idea what was going on, but I knew that fighting Tybalt wouldn’t get me out of the darkness. It would strand me there.”

— Seanan McGuire

193. “Roger guesses people all over the world must use the same tone when they talk to the smart kids, like they were bombs on the edge of going off, instead of children with brains too big for the people they’re supposed to be.”

— Seanan McGuire

194. “Please stop using the time distortion field to age your cheese. It is an inappropriate use of scientific resources, and anyway, you can’t start with Velveeta and expect to get anything decent out the other end.”

— Seanan McGuire

195. “Oh, her? She had raised a hand against us, and willingly entered our circle. We ate her.”

— Seanan McGuire

196. “At least my headache was almost gone. I always deal better with emergencies when I’m not actively in pain.”

— Seanan McGuire

197. “Books were precious things, meant to be treated well, both because they deserved it and because if she didn’t treat them well, her parents might stop buying them for her.”

— Seanan McGuire

198. “That’s basically the cherry on top of this week’s sundae of suck.”

— Seanan McGuire

199. “Everything was going to be perfect.”

— Seanan McGuire

200. “Roses thrive surprisingly well on blood. I guess that’s why they’re such a foundational part of Faerie.”

— Seanan McGuire